DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in response to the application filed on 27 March 2024.
Claims 11, 13, 14 are cancelled
Claims 1-10, 12, 15-23 are presented for examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-10, 12, 15-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park et al. US patent No. 12,520,165 B2 in view of Wei et al. “Codebook design and beam training for extremely large-scale RIS: Far-field or Near-field?arXiv: 2109.10143v1 [cs.IT] 21 September 2021” as hereafter as Wei.
As to claim 1, Park discloses substantially the invention as claimed, including a method of a base station (Figure 15, the Base Station) supporting beamforming in a wireless communication system (Figure 15), the method comprising:
transmitting control information (synchronization/system information in a search signal 1, col. 22, lines 61-62) for controlling a plurality of reflection patterns of a Reconfiguration Intelligent Surface (RIS) (a Large Intelligent Surface (LIS)) to an RIS controller (RC) (a Large Intelligent Surface (LIS) controller) (Figures 15-17 and associated text);
transmitting synchronization signals (synchronization/system information in a UE search signal 1, col. 22, lines 61-62) corresponding to a plurality of beams of the base station for each of the plurality of reflection patterns controlled based on the control information to a terminal (Figure 15, a UE) located in a shadow area (a shadowing area) via the RIS (Figures 15-17 and associated text);
receiving a measurement report including a measurement result of measuring strength of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams of the base station for each of the plurality of reflection patterns from the terminal (Figures 15-17 and associated text, the Base Station receives the signal strength signals form the UE via the LIS and acquires the strongest reception signal strength from among the at least one received initial access signal, col. 26, line 1 – col. 27, line 5);
selecting (acquiring) at least one beam among the plurality of beams and at least one reflection pattern among the plurality of reflection patterns as an optimal beam and an optimal reflection pattern for the shadow area, based on the measurement result included in the measurement report (Figures 15-17 and associated text, the Base Station may acquire information on the connection request message from the LIS reception beam having the highest signal strength from among the LIS reception beams for the uplink at least one received initial access signal, col. 26, line 1 – col. 27, line 5); and
However, Park does not explicitly the claimed element of “generating a codebook for the RIS based on the selected optimal reflection pattern for the shadow area”.
Park’s (col. 25, lines 44-50) describes that “the BS may set period, time frequency and/or code resources used for transmission of the beam search signal in the second search section in the manner that the resultant period, time, frequency, and/or code resources can be distinguished from period, time, frequency, and/or code resources for the beam search signal in the search section”.
Wei disclose in Figures 1, 2, Section II-A and II-B that, “wherein in different time slots, the reflecting beaming vector θ is set as different codewords in the predefined codebook, which will equivalently produce differential beams. For each codebook, the user will measure the strength of the received signal r and feedback the optimal codework index and based on the far-field array steering vector, a far-field codebook is designed” (page 7, lines 7-24).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the AI/ML/deep learning art before the effective filing date of the claimed to have modified Wei’s teachings of the generated far-field codebook(s) with the teachings of Park’s, for the purpose of providing the reduction in beam training overhead (Wei, Abstract).
As to claim 2, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information is transmitted once for the plurality of reflection patterns (Park, Figures 15-19 and associated text)..
As to claim 3, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information includes at least one of timing information indicating a time point at which the terminal measures the strength of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams of the base station for each of the plurality of reflection patterns, indication information indicating each of the plurality of reflection patterns and order information indicating an order in which the plurality of reflection patterns are controlled, information about a transmission period of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams, and information indicating a number of times the transmission period of the synchronization signals is repeated for each of the plurality of reflection patterns (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text).
As to claim 4, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information includes at least one of timing information indicating a time point at which the terminal measures the strength of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams of the base station for each of the plurality of reflection patterns, indication information indicating each of the plurality of reflection patterns and information indicating an order in which the plurality of reflection patterns are controlled, and information indicating time at which each of the plurality of reflection patterns is controlled (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text)..
As to claim 5, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information is transmitted for each of the plurality of reflection patterns (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text).
As to claim 6, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information includes at least one of timing information indicating a time point at which the terminal measures the strength of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams of the base station for a reflection pattern corresponding to the control information, indication information indicating the reflection pattern corresponding to the control information among the plurality of reflection patterns, information about a transmission period of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams, and information indicating a number of times the transmission period of the synchronization signals is repeated for the reflection pattern corresponding to the control information (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text).
As to claim 7, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the control information includes at least one of timing information indicating a time point at which the terminal measures the strength of the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams of the base station for a reflection pattern corresponding to the control information, indication information indicating the reflection pattern corresponding to the control information among the plurality of reflection patterns, and information indicating a time at which the reflection pattern corresponding to the control information is controlled . (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text).
As to claim 8, Park-Wei discloses, wherein the measurement result includes, for each of the plurality of reflection patterns, information about at least one reflection pattern and at least one beam, which correspond to a case that strength of a signal among the synchronization signals corresponding to the plurality of beams satisfies a predetermined threshold value or more (Park, Figures 15-21 and associated text).
Claims 9, 10, 15-20 correspond to the Base station claims of the BS method claims 1-8; therefore they are rejected under the same rationale as in BS method claims 1-8 above.
As to claim 12, Park discloses substantially the invention as claimed, including a method of a base station (Figures 14, 15, the Base Station) supporting beamforming in a wireless communication system (Figures 14, 15), the base station comprising: a transceiver; and a controller configured to:
control the transceiver to transmit control information (synchronization/system information in a search signal 1, col. 22, lines 61-62) for controlling at least one reflection pattern among a plurality of reflection patterns of a reconfiguration intelligent surface (RIS) during a predetermined time interval to an RIS controller (RC) (a Large Intelligent Surface (LIS)) to an RIS controller (RC) (a Large Intelligent Surface (LIS) controller) (Figures 15-17 and associated text),
control the transceiver to transmit synchronization signals (synchronization/ system information in a UE search signal 1, col. 22, lines 61-62) corresponding to a plurality of beams of the base station for the at least one reflection pattern controlled based on the control information during the predetermined time interval to a terminal (Figures 14, 15, a UE) located at a shadow area (a shadowing area) via the RIS (Figures 15-17 and associated text),
identify whether the terminal establishes a connection with the base station according to a random access procedure during the predetermined time interval (Figures 14, 17 and associated text),
if the terminal establishes the connection with the base station according to the random access procedure during the predetermined time interval, identify log information associated with the random access procedure of the terminal (Figures 14, 17 and associated text),
identify at least one synchronization signal for which the random access procedure is successfully performed among the plurality of synchronization signals from the log information (Figures 14, 17 and associated text),
select (acquire) the at least one reflection pattern and a beam corresponding to the at least one synchronization signal among the plurality of beams as an optimal reflection pattern and an optimal beam for the shadow area, respectively (Figures 15-19 and associated text, the Base Station may acquire information on the connection request message from the LIS reception beam having the highest signal strength from among the LIS reception beams for the uplink at least one received initial access signal, col. 26, line 1 – col. 27, line 5); and
Park’s (col. 25, lines 44-50) describes that “the BS may set period, time frequency and/or code resources used for transmission of the beam search signal in the second search section in the manner that the resultant period, time, frequency, and/or code resources can be distinguished from period, time, frequency, and/or code resources for the beam search signal in the search section”.
Wei disclose in Figures 1, 2, Section II-A and II-B that, “wherein in different time slots, the reflecting beaming vector θ is set as different codewords in the predefined codebook, which will equivalently produce differential beams. For each codebook, the user will measure the strength of the received signal r and feedback the optimal codework index and based on the far-field array steering vector, a far-field codebook is designed” (page 7, lines 7-24).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the AI/ML/deep learning art before the effective filing date of the claimed to have modified Wei’s teachings of the generated far-field codebook(s) with the teachings of Park’s, for the purpose of providing the reduction in beam training overhead (Wei, Abstract).
Claims 21; 22; 23 have similar limitations of the base station claims 3; 6; 4+7 respectively as shown above.
The prior art cited in this Office action are: Park et al. US patent No. 12,520,165 B2 in view of Wei et al. “Codebook design and beam training for extremely large-scale RIS: Far-field or Near-field?arXiv: 2109.10143v1 [cs.IT] 21 September 2021” as hereafter as Wei.
Conclusion
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/HAI V NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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